Yoga Buyer Beware

I kid all the time that I am just waiting to hear of someone teaching Yoga and Beer Pong. It’s funny, but also…likely. Perhaps, I should go trademark that right now.

A downside of yoga’s enormous popularity in the U.S. combined with the swell of yoga studios is that you have people who are really good at business, but lack a depth of knowledge and experience in yoga, opening studios and then offering yoga teacher trainings as a way to stay afloat financially. Buyer, beware!

I’m on an email list linked to my daughter’s school area. This came in recently:

“Completing <GeneralYogaSchool’s> 200 Hour Teacher Training program during my senior year of high school, I have been a certified Vinyasa Yoga Instructor for about a year now. I have taught various private classes, some specific students include: runners, swimmers, a water polo team, and an equestrian team, and I have also lead a class catered towards stress/anxiety. I have experience teaching beginners (including some super cute kindergarteners), and can develop classes geared towards the needs of whomever I am teaching.

I would be happy to set up a class for any group who is interested. And based on interest, I will also be looking to teach an early Tuesday morning Vinyasa class (6:30-7:30?) for adults. Please get in touch with me if you are interested! Send me a text (614) xxx-xxxx or email xxxxxxxx@gmail.co

Namaste!!”

Because I got to live in the 1980s, I can say this: “Gag me with a spoon!”

She got one thing right, she is an instructor; she is not a teacher. At maybe 19 years of age, you are not able to teach a yoga class geared towards the needs of whoever you are teaching. New yoga instructors, stop offering this kind of thing! Studios, stop telling your new “instructors” to offer classes geared towards anything but a very broad and generalized population that is already healthy and fit. At the very least, teach them not to dabble in yoga for mental health unless they’ve had an IAYT-certified training in it!

You can’t considered yourself an experienced yoga teacher until you’ve got at least ten years of teaching notched; and, for the love of all things wise, don’t attempt to teach others how to teach yoga before you’re nearer that 20-year marker. Your experience of yoga must simmer, must be fired through a handful of life’s trials, before you can start to understand the constancy of stira and sukha, before you can stand strongly in the raw and vulnerable hrydaye, before you can handle another human being’s fragility. Yoga isn’t just about stretched hamstrings and an upbeat attitude. Let’s show some respect.